By Sarah Hall

Editor

“When all else fails, ham radio works.”

That’s the slogan of the American Radio Relay League, a national association for amateur radio operators nationwide, which hosted its annual nationwide Field Days this past weekend. Among the participating groups was the Liverpool Amateur Repeater Club, whose members gathered at Cicero’s William Park to demonstrate their craft and reach out to other operators worldwide.

“It’s an emergency activity to encourage people to go out and set up in remote areas … and see what you can do, try to make contacts,” said John Rockdashil, director of the Liverpool club’s board. “They’re predicting probably 40,000 amateur radio operators in the United States who’ll be participating in it this year. We had between 35 and 40,000 last year.”

In addition to being fun for the licensed operators, he field day event is meant to show the public what amateur — or “ham” — radios do: connect people in the absence of cellular or electronic technology.

“We aren’t really tied to a network,” Rockdashil said. “We use the radio frequencies. As far as going in the field we have generators, we have batteries. There’s a lot of people that, in amateur radio, that’s their thing, is to do the public service or do the emergency thing. They’re prepared for it.”

While many think of amateur radio as obsolete, a number of events have proven that the technology is still relevant. While cell towers were down and communications were otherwise knocked out during recent natural disasters like the California wildfires or Midwest tornadoes, rescue personnel and others were able to get word to the rest of the country thanks to ham radio.

“We’re not tied to anything specific, and we get to talk to each other and we can get through,” Rockdashil said.

Club member Rich Hillenbrand recalled how ham radios kept workers in touch with their families in the wake of Sept. 11.

“I was a rescue worker at 9/11,” Hillenbrand said. “I went down there from Syracuse from the very first day, got in there and worked with the firemen and policemen. For the first month, we worked with a search dog team doing body work.”

He said there was no way for rescue and recovery workers to communicate back to their families.

“The cell phone towers used to be on the two World Trade Centers,” Hillenbrand said. “If you had a cell phone, you might be able to get a close connection, but it would last about three seconds and drop off. If you wanted to send a message home — ‘Hey, we’re OK’ — you couldn’t call them. There was no electricity.”

But volunteers had set up a network of amateur radios to address the gap in communications.

“They had a room set up at one of the Marriott Hotels, and I was going over there to get something to eat, and here it’s full of ham radio operators, and they were handling emergency traffic and just personal traffic,” Hillenbrand said. “The hams did a wonderful job down there.”

Ham radio has proven invaluable in emergency situations, Rockdashil said, which has kept the technology from going by the wayside in the digital age.

“It does play a big role in the emergency sector,” Rockdashil said. “This is a means of preparedness for disasters.”

Meanwhile, the technology has evolved to keep up with the changing times. Ham operators can now exchange digital data embedded in radio frequencies, downloaded with the click of a mouse.

“We have an entire conversation with probably three or four mouse clicks,” club member Pete Sochocki said while connecting with another radio operator in Venezuela. “We can have a conversation on a keyboard. We can transfer entire files. This is essentially the internet, if the internet goes down.”

Despite those changes, the perceptions of amateur radio have remained much the same.

“People have kind of forgotten about amateur radio,” Rockdashil said. “They think of it as an old person’s hobby. Unfortunately a lot of us are older, but we try to attract newer folks too. And there are a lot of things to do in amateur radio that are computer-related, which attracts the younger folks and we try to emphasize that. It’s actually growing. Hard to believe, but it is growing.”

Club member Dave Powell agreed.

“People are like, ‘Isn’t that hobby dead?’ This hobby is very alive, because of things like the digital technology,” Powell said. “Getting the entry-level licenses has never been easier. The number of people that are getting licenses are on a record level right now.”

To encourage membership, the Liverpool club is one of just a few to offer regular testing, both for the original license and for higher levels. Testing is offered once a month, while other clubs in other areas may only do it four times a year.

“We’ve been seeing a real increase in people coming in,” Rockdashil said. “We have people from within apparently 100 miles of Syracuse come to take our exam.”

Interest in amateur radio also spiked about 10 years ago when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the requirement for licensees to pass a testing component including Morse code.

“Some of that was very difficult for them to learn and to send,” said Sharon May, who serves as the club secretary.  May has been licensed for 30 years. “I had a difficult time with the Morse code. I barely passed that.”

The Liverpool club’s membership, May said, is around 180, making it one of the larger clubs in the state.

“We’re doing well, and it continues to grow,” she said. “And like I say, we’re really pleased to see people coming in for testing that are getting licensed. And a lot of them are younger too, and that’s what we like to see too. Us old folks aren’t going to last forever.”

Rockdashil said amateur radio really is a hobby for people of all ages and all walks of life.

“This has been around for a long time,” he said. “People have supported it right along and it never really died out. It probably had some dips, you know, but it never really went away. I credit that to a lot of the older folks really keep encouraging the younger folks. It’s a nice hobby.”